It is far too soon after the iniquity of the default retirement age was brought to an end to be wishing for a return to enforced retirement (The have-it-all generation has to be told when to quit, 5 August). We and others fought long and hard to articulate the strong business case for age-diverse workforces. It is retrograde to see older workers referred to as “desk-blocking new talent”. There is much evidence across business of the benefits that younger workers derive from having older workers around as mentors and contributing their skills and experience – and indeed, in a fast-paced technology-driven world, of the benefits older workers derive from having younger workers around.

Organisations benefit from having workforces that reflect the demographics of the customer bases they serve, and with a diversity of thoughts and ideas. By 2030 the EU working-age population will have shrunk by 4%. So it’s a business imperative to encourage age-diverse employment – we need as many people as possible, young and old, to be active in the labour market if our economy is to be healthy and competitive.

The economics of longer working lives are about more than the cost of pensions. We all benefit from retaining the skills and contribution of both eager older workers and eager younger workers. And we’re all the poorer if we consign people who still have much to contribute to the sofa through an unfounded belief that this will automatically benefit younger generations.Susannah ClementsDeputy chief executive, CIPD

• Ros Altmann, the older workers’ champion at the Department of Work and Pensions, suggests that people of pensionable age should quit and start their own businesses, leaving jobs for younger people. Has she considered what this would do to younger people who already run businesses? As a second-hand bookseller for 37 years, I often felt that colleagues looked at me askance because they knew that my husband had a good job and would never let me starve. Similarly, all these people quitting to start a business would have a pension to fall back on, and could afford to undercut those already in the field or take work from people who were already finding it hard to survive. The average income of a self-employed person has fallen from £15,000 to £11,000 since the beginning of the century. Think again, Ros.Margaret SquiresSt Andrews, Fife

• Every time you publish another article designed to bash the “have-it-all” generation I am angered at the assumption that life has been a bed of roses for those of us now in our 60s and that (apparently) our comfortable existence has been achieved at the expense of the younger generation. Whatever truth there may be in this, it is doubtful whether many youngsters today, in order to achieve their ambitions, would swap their current existence to live life under the conditions that prevailed in the 1950s (details on request if needed!).

The point is that while we rightly sympathise with the difficulties they experience, we must also concede that, from a material point of view, they are much better provided for than was the generation being accused of causing all their problems. Many of us in our 60s may be relatively comfortable after a lifetime of hard work, but most of us grew up with damn all. The Guardian really should cease stoking up intergenerational conflict – surely there are more constructive ways to address today’s problems. Robert RamskillCoventry

• The reason the have-it-all generation continue to have it all is that they are the ones who vote. That is precisely why the under-30s, the unemployed and those on low wages, who tend not to vote, suffer most under current government policies. Our politicians may be sociopaths but they are not stupid sociopaths. They will go on shuffling goodies in the direction of those likely to get them re-elected. It is clearly time to introduce compulsory voting, which probably needs to be linked with compulsory voter registration and with making it easier to cast a vote. We need political parties to make the case, which is unanswerable, and commit to include it in manifestos. There’s no point in a level playing field if one side fields far more players than the other. The Tories are unlikely to vote for Christmas, so I look to Labour and the Lib Dems. Alan HealeyMilson, Shropshire

• “People with good jobs, professional and managerial, will keep them,” says Anne Perkins. “But teachers, or those who do hard manual work, will not.” I was planning to say that, as I understand it, teaching has always been a profession, and even the coalition, with its penchant for downgrading the status of teachers, hadn’t so far aligned teaching with “manual” work. But a couple of pages later, in the Education section, I read the experiences of a dedicated teacher and a committed teaching assistant who had just left the teaching profession on account of the appalling impact of current unprofessional education policies and practices on their working lives. I realised I had overestimated the coalition.Professor Jennifer JenkinsSouthampton

• When Anne Perkins reaches retirement age, will she take her own advice and let a younger journalist be employed?Maggie JohnstonSt Albans, Hertfordshire